Advances in microprocessor and telecommunication technology have led to wide spread deployment and adoption of mobile devices, such as wireless mobile phones. For wireless mobile phones, in addition to wireless telephony, the late models are often equipped with advanced capabilities, such as calendar, address book, access to the World Wide Web (WWW), emails, and so forth.
Much of these functionalities are designed to increase the productivity of business users. As a result, it is not surprising that business users constitute a major user segment of wireless mobile phones, especially for the high-end function rich models. Increasingly, more business data, such as business contact information, business plans, sales/marketing strategies, financial reports, and so forth, are being stored on wireless mobile phones.
However, unlike personal computers or other computing devices, where user authentication, through e.g. user log-in, are routinely provided with virtually all operating systems, few if any operating systems of wireless mobile phones provide means to authenticate users. As a result, under the prior art, wireless mobile phones are at risk of unauthorized usage, as well as data being compromised by unauthorized accesses.